Case files / varginha-1996
Varginha: the creature by the wall
- When
- January 20, 1996 · 1996 on the timeline
- Where
- Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Reported by
- Three young women from the city
- Released
- Brazilian Army inquiry (1997), opened to the public by Brazil's Superior Military Court in January 2026
- Status
- Army inquiry found no military role; disputed by researchers
On a rainy afternoon, three young women in the Jardim Andere neighborhood said they saw a figure crouched by a wall, with brown, oily-looking skin, large red eyes and bumps on its head. They ran. Within weeks, stories spread that firefighters and Army trucks had captured one or two creatures and taken them to a hospital and then to a university. Ufologists Ubirajara Rodrigues and Vitório Pacaccini wrote the book Incidente em Varginha, which made the case famous across Brazil.
Another story tied the case to Marco Eli Chereze, a military police officer who died in February 1996; some researchers say he had touched a creature. His death was officially put down to an infection after surgery.
In March 1997 the Army's sergeants school opened a military police inquiry into the rumors. Its two volumes, about 300 pages each, say every soldier named in the book denied taking part, that the logs of the Army vehicles mentioned show no trips that fit the story, and that the women most likely saw a local man known for crouching in the street, who was dirty from the rain. The inquiry includes his photo. Pacaccini and other researchers reject that, saying the women would have known him.